According to the American Cancer Society, Nearly 1.5 million Americans have been diagnosed with cancer in 2009 .   Over one-half million have died. Our guest is Dr. Neil Fiore, a licensed psychologist, trainer and author. Dr. Fiore is the former president of The Northern California Society of Clinical Hypnosis, has conducted training at the California School of Professional Psychology, Summit Hospital, Smithsonian Institute, Levi Strauss, UCSF and Stanford and has attended seminars led by Dr. Milton H. Erickson. His book “Coping with the Emotional Impact of Cancer: Become an Active Patient and Take Charge of Your Treatment” offers hope and steps on how to deal with the stress and depression of cancer and its treatment and how to communicate with doctors and family. More important, Dr. Fiore suggests ways to build emotional support systems with physicians, family and friends. He also shows us how personal attitudes can have an enormous impact on the course of recovery.

Selected by Boardroom Reports as one of their "Top Ten Self-Help Gurus," Dr. Fiore is firmly established as one of America's top productivity experts. Dr. Fiore is also the author of The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play [Putnam, 2007] and Awaken Your Strongest Self:Break Free of Stress, Inner Conflict, and Self-Sabotage [McGraw-Hill, 2006]. He continues to run seminars and training programs that combine the use of hypnosis and other therapeutic devices to obtain peak performance and productivity.

Dr. Fiore has published professional articles in numerous journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, and continues to contribute to popular magazines like Psychology Today, Fitness, Elle, Glamour, Entrepreneur, and Boardroom Reports.

When Neil Fiore was 32 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given one year to live. He told himself he would not live that year in fear or being controlled by doctors.

He asked questions, read about his type of cancer and possible treatments, and fought to get the chemotherapy that saved his life. He volunteered for an experimental chemotherapy protocol that was the first to yield an 80-percent survival rate and led to the development of the chemo that cured the very advanced cancer of Lance Armstrong twenty years later.

Neil continued to work as a psychology intern while taking weekly injections and did not experience severe side-effects for the first few months possibly because he was able to lower his stress hormones by choosing and fighting to get on chemotherapy.

After 18 months of treatment he made the difficult decision to end chemotherapy, was asked to make a video for other cancer patients, spoke at Grand Rounds, and had his article, "Fighting Cancer-One Patient's Perspective," published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

In 1986 Dr Fiore became one of the founding members of The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship.

He has survived metastasized cancer for over 30 years and is dedicated to encouraging other patients to be active and take charge of their treatment.

Coping with the Emotional Impact of Cancers offers hope and steps on how to deal with the stress and depression of cancer and its treatment, how to communicate with doctors and family. More important, Dr. Fiore, a psychologist, suggests ways to build emotional support systems with physicians, family and friends.

Note: this is not another book that promotes a "positive attitude" but sites the research that the expression of the so-called "negative emotions" of depression and anger actually enhances your immune system. And finally, he shows how playing an active role in your treatment can have an enormous impact on the course of recovery.